Relationship between Duration and Intensity Cues for Stress Marking in Fluent and Non-fluent Aphasia in Spanish: a Compensatory Strategy?

Most aphasiological studies have concluded that stress pattern assignment is unimpaired in both fluent and non-fluent aphasia [4]. However, the existence of specific stress errors in fluent aphasics has been reported in some cases [3]. Concerning the acoustic characteristics of stress production by aphasic patients in several languages, there has generally been found to be a deficit in durational cue processing [5] in non-fluent aphasia, often interpreted as a secondary consequence of a basic timing deficit [1], whereas the other acoustic stress correlates remain relatively unimpaired [5]. There has also been reported to be a “subtle phonetic deficit” affecting stress realisations in fluent aphasia [2]. In a previous study, we have shown that that, in the absence of phonological impairment, there is a phonetic (motoric) deficit affecting both Broca’s and conduction aphasics’ lexical stress processing, involving not only timing aspects but also F0 and intensity cues. We have reported a contradictory use of the three parameters in both aphasic groups’ realisations. The aim of this study, carried out on the same participants as the previous one, is to analyse whether abnormal duration cues for stress marking are somehow compensated for by intensity cues in order to avoid “equal stress” phenomena.